V for Vendetta
Inside Liberty Watch Today - April 3, 2006

When's the last time you saw a good old-fashioned anti-government feel good romance movie? It's likely been awhile, if ever, but your time has finally arrived with "V for Vendetta."

The movie was adapted from the ten-issue comic book series of the same name written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd that was later collected as a graphic novel. V ran from 1982 to 1985 in Warrior, a British anthology comic.

The character V wears a mask with the likeness of Guy Fawkes of Gunpowder Plot fame. Fawkes was a member of group of Roman Catholic conspirators who attempted to blow up Westminster Place during the first session of the 1605 Parliament on the 5th of November. Their aim was to assassinate the king and members of both houses of Parliament with one big bang.

However, the plan was foiled and Fawkes and his co-conspirators were executed for treason and attempted murder. Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated every November 5th in England as Fawkes was "the only man to ever enter parliament with honest intentions."

V for Vendetta takes place in a 21st century England that is ruled by the most vicious of tyrants, played by John Hurt. In his regime, people are continually reminded that a state-imposed curfew is "for your protection," with painful consequences awaiting those who do not comply. Into this setting steps the hero, "V" - played by Hugo Weaving - a man who had been brutalized by statist functionaries, and who is intent on destroying this most inhumane, fascistic state.

This evil state was of course elected overwhelmingly by a disinterested and dumbed down public that the movie portrays with particular skill; mindlessly watching TV hanging on every lie government leaders and a particular state functionary commentator tell them.

Conservative critics especially hate the movie because the fascistic state calls itself conservative and controls the populace with a message that melds religion and state. Michael Medved calls the movie: "V for vile, vacuous, venal, verminous and vomitaceous." What really has him upset is that in V; America has collapsed due to its misguided Middle East wars and government is portrayed as evil.

V is in Medved's words, "both slick and sick-competent enough to count as truly dangerous and hateful in its open glorification of terrorist violence." Freedom lovers will see it differently. The character V's combat heroics will remind one of Mel Gibson's portrayal of peaceful farmer Benjamin Martin in "The Patriot" that is driven to lead the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution when a sadistic British officer murders his son.

Reviewer Daniel Briney says V "is a left-wing paranoiac's wet dream. Every obsessive liberal cliché imaginable has been dutifully trotted out here: Church and state walk arm in arm; the first priest we meet is a pedophiliac deviant. News organizations are beholden to state approval. The public is kept in line by the nationalistic rantings of a charismatic right-wing talk-show host. The 'former' United States lies in ruins, engulfed in civil war, destroyed by its own war on terror. 'Terrorism', as a concept, is itself seen to be the exclusive domain of power-hoarding governments, which concoct such acts as a means of rallying the public against imaginary enemies." Yes, that's right, that's what makes the film so great.

Briney goes on to call V "a story crafted by and for political adolescents," a funny comment coming from a reviewer of the ripe old age of 28.

A more reasoned assessment comes from law professor Butler Schaffer: "For those who are serious about living in a society in which peace, liberty, and the inviolability of the human spirit prevail, V for Vendetta provides an opportunity to rethink our social assumptions; to develop new ideas about our relationships to one another. And as 'V' informs us, 'ideas are bulletproof.' This film is a powerful antidote to the mindset that is destroying mankind. It is not for those who wish only to reform the state and confirm beliefs that the 20th century has rendered no longer suitable to the interests of humanity."

V for Vendetta is a must-see for Liberty Watch readers.

Doug French, Liberty Watch Columnist